


I Thought I Was Fine

by wordspank



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Accident/injury-prone Caroline, Annoying relatives, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-15 14:11:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordspank/pseuds/wordspank
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't know how she's lived for seventeen years as a human being and not died at least once in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just A Scratch | Unwanted Diagnosis

**Author's Note:**

> For prompt #062: Rug Burn.

**I. Just A Scratch**

 

"What happened to your arm?"

The real story is hard to stomach, so Caroline can't tell anyone that someone ripped through her forearm with a two-by-four without raising alarms. It was really meant for her head, but she caught the shadowed reflection off the framed photos perched on her fireplace mantel just in time to turn around and shield herself. She remembers the crack of hard lumber splitting over the point of her elbow, the searing pain of sharp wood digging into her skin as it dragged all the way to the bone of her wrist.

It hurt like a bitch. She spent the next hour picking splinters out of her wounds, but not before remarking to her assailant about what a huge jerk he was; her cousin Mike, the ridiculously boneheaded highschool slacktivist, had been invited to stay for a few days by her mother. And no, the dweeb said he couldn't recognize her.

She had far ruder words for him sitting on the tip of her tongue, but she wanted to keep it classy.

Caroline looks at the scabs sheepishly. Her healing isn’t kicking in fast enough for this, and there isn’t nearly enough blood she could drink to make it go any faster. At least without overdosing on the stuff anyway. Even vampires need time, she supposes.

The yellow cardigan she donned should have covered it up, but she didn’t realize that it wasn’t opaque enough to hide the dark claw-like cuts until she met Elena by the quad. Always with the sharp eye, that girl.

“I fell down,” Caroline tries to sound convincing about it. She swats Elena’s hand away and hurriedly rolls her sleeve back down so as to not draw any more attention – the girls from Campus Security Femme can get a little aggressive with their activism. “Just an accident.” She frowns for effect. “Seriously.”

Elena clearly doesn’t believe her, but what matters is that she stops asking about it.

 

 

"Look," she shows off the lightened scar. "All healed up." Another couple of hours and the marks will fade into nonexistence, thanks to the extra helping of platelets she sipped in the morning. Caroline doesn't know how she's lived for seventeen years as a human being and not died at least once in between.

"That's not the point," Bonnie says, with that reprimanding look she gives whenever Caroline graces trouble. "What if it was me waiting around in your house?"

"Well, it wasn't you, and trust me, I want him out of here more than anyone else." Caroline rolls her eyes. "I have to share a bathroom with him."

Her best friend shoots her a disapproving frown. "You know that it's the least of your problems, right?"

Caroline answers defensively. "You've _never_ shared a bathroom with him."

And it's true, because he's the worst possible slob to live with. Doesn't put the seat back down. Uses her hand soap as body wash. Applies her ultra-hydrating moisturizer to the calluses of his feet. There's nothing more that she wants than to pull out his spine from the front but everyone will be jumping at her with their moral codes. _Oh, Caroline, you can't, he's only an innocent human being! They all grow up! The police department does not condone murder, young lady!_

Bonnie shakes her head, attributing Caroline's cousin woes to a case of minor territorialism, but still seeks confirmation that she's not in imminent danger. "Look, he may not be trying to kill you, but you have to tell your mom about what he did. You can always stay with me." This isn't comforting, but it's better than a recommendation to lock herself up in the old cellar hidden deep in the woods.

"Thanks for the offer," she says, "but I'm not about to leave my house full of luxury skincare alone with that monster."

"Don't hurt yourself," Bonnie replies, with just a little bit of sass. Caroline laughs and looks away.

Something odd falls into her line of sight. A figure, standing next to the lamppost a great distance away, somehow too still to be just a passing figment of her imagination and too out of place in the background scenery to ignore.

The hairs on the back of her neck rise at the possibility of being watched, but she isn't sure if it's just the psychology of being recently injured that's turning her slightly paranoid.

Whatever it is, the form disappears when she blinks, leaving nothing but an empty space where she thought she saw it staring.

"What?" Bonnie notices her sudden shift in mood.

Caroline chalks it up to a wild imagination paired with too much frustration over her cousin. "It's nothing," she half-assures, even though if it feels like something.

 

 

It comes out of nowhere.

First, she hears the air slicing with a swoosh.  Then she looks down.

There's a bolt lodged in her gut.

The pain strikes her seconds later, and still astonished at the abruptness of it, she grits her teeth and extracts it from her body with both hands.

Caroline does a quick scan of her surroundings, but sees no one - she's alone in the gym, and it should be easy to catch the person doing this to her, given the lack of places a person can hide. But she can't detect any movement, even with the adrenaline kicking her senses into overdrive.

As sudden as the first, Caroline lets out a sharp cry that rings throughout the gym when the second quarrel pierces her shoulder from behind. She spins on her heel and spots him, leaping away with cat-like reflexes - Mike displays a great amount of fear and freezes in place after being seen.

Well this is awkward.

Nobody moves an inch or says anything, but there are definitely thoughts. For him, regretting being caught, and how he can save himself; for her, trying to come to grips with the fact that a member of the family has tried to murder her twice now. It doesn't look like he's going to stop anytime soon, either.

It's until she hears the nocking of a bow that she listens to her gut to flee. Not sparing another moment, Caroline speeds back home as quickly as she can to lock all the windows and doors in the house.

"Great," she mumbles to herself. With heavy feet, she clumsily makes her way to the refrigerator in the garage where rows of blood bags are piled on top of each other on every shelf. Taking in a lungful of icy air, she pulls the projectile from her body swiftly.

Ouch.

The bolt hits the ground with a clatter and Caroline slumps herself against the heavy frame, letting the wisps of cold air wrap around her body and soothe the open wounds.

Damn it. She’s living under the same roof as a hunter. A slayer? Oh god, Mike is _male Buffy_. The first incident had not been as innocent a mistake as he'd made it seem.

That _loser._ Hunting her on her home turf.

She scoffs at the absurdity of the situation, snatching a bag of B+ from behind her head and taking a comforting bite. It may be cold, purified and clinical, but it still tastes of the life it once had been. The only thing that could top this would be if she sought it raw from the source.

Caroline tilts her head back and enjoys it to the last drop, letting it distract her from how pissed off she is over Mike's nosy antics. Then she reaches for a second helping.

 

 

**II. Unwanted Diagnosis**

Vampirism isn't always about self-control for Caroline. It's about making people believe you have it. When you feel hungry, you need to glance at, not ogle, the jugulars of the people next to you. Never stare, unless they're not paying any particular attention.

It can get distracting when you're ravenous and the pattering of heartbeats begin to sound like a violent roar in your ears, but the trick is to breathe and count backwards from ten. Or if that doesn't work, then take a hike. Stefan used to get her out of the house to take her mind off the bloodlust.

Bloodlust, she huffs in disbelief. The struggle is nearly as terrible as her torrential relationship with carbs. Worse that she needs the blood to accelerate healing.

The walks are effective, though. This time she's taking a short stroll some streets down from Bonnie’s home, where she's crashing in the meantime. Having gone through a shameful bout of stress eating - drinking?- when she guzzled six blood bags like a frat boy chugging beer at a kegger, the only way she can cool down is to stay away.

In the wee hours of the morning, the streets are cold and empty. The air vibrates with the chirp of crickets, and what's supposed to give Caroline tranquility has instead caused her to look over her shoulder more than once.

Thanks to Mike's ambush, her mind has set itself to high alert, paying attention to every detail possible that could hint at it happening again; the scrape of dry leaves blown by the breeze along the sidewalk; hearing an irregular beat of feet that doesn't quite match her own footsteps; a crawl up her back that feels like fingers but is only the wind tickling her-

She yelps when she collides with someone. Her first instinct is to reach for the person's arm, but she finds her wrists being seized before she can even twitch a muscle.

Caroline shouts her discontent at being bested and looks up to see Kol Mikaelson, who is absolutely bemused that she tried to accost him.

"Hey, pretty," he grins, not keeping his once over of her discreet at all. "What's a girl like you doing all alone here at this hour?"

She tries to wrestle away from him, but he's sickeningly strong. When she finally realises the futility of trying to escape, she narrows her eyes at him. "Have you been following me?"

Kol recoils, incredulous. "You flatter yourself," he says, loosening his grip. "I have my own business here."

Wrenching herself away, she nurses the newly formed welts at the heels of her palm. "The business of being a mental patient on the loose," she retorts, annoyance simmering. Bad enough that she can't physically overpower him. She's not going to spare him from the blade of her words.

Naturally, he does not appreciate the opinion. "It's none of _your_ business," he corrects, at first delivered with a simple sneer, but then it dissolves into something more curious as his hand rises to cup the side of Caroline’s cheek. It startles her, but she’s so frozen in half-fear half-caution that the only thing that she can manage is a, "Do I have something on my face?"

Kol studies her weary eyes. _Please don't compel me, please don't compel me,_ she screams through them. The last thing she wants is to have her freedom stripped from her again; this guy seems way more unrestrained with his Original abilities than the rest of his family.

 _"_ Why are you drinking so much blood?" he questions, thumb pulling down just under her eye to note the colour. She finds his sudden tender manner most unsettling, and the longer she remains in his grasp, the better she's able to discern what makes him undeniably attractive - deep set eyes framed by laugh lines, a strong, masculine jawline, and that unabashedly cheeky smile.

That’s not good. With all of her willpower Caroline folds her arms and steps backward, reeling in the feelings while putting distance between the both of them. Just as she does with the blood.

Stop being shallow, Care. This guy is as dangerous as he is batshit crazy. Chiseled features aren't going to change that.

"Why do you care?" she asks.

"You're _hungry._ Your body's on a borderline frenzy." Then comes a wide grin. "Vampires are up for anything when they’re..." His words trail away and his finger points to head, circling a point on his temple.

 _Crazy_ , he's saying.

She is _not_ crazy. It’s not like she’s gone on a bender and sunk her teeth into anyone. She’s appalled that he’d even suggest that she has so little control over herself.

“It’s all in your eyes,” says Kol, “All those tiny capillaries making ridges inside – you’d better stop, or you’ll go on a rampage. Wouldn’t want to mess up my plans now, do we?”

Mystery plans which she doesn’t care about. “Well, I’m pretty sure that if I wasn't being hunted, I wouldn’t need a supersized blood bag to keep my limbs attached.”

"And who would want to hurt a little bird like you?"

Trouble is the last thing she wants, and talking about it is somehow more upsetting than being alone and shutting it out. "Nobody. I'm fine."

He's unconvinced. "There are ways for me to find out, you know. Besides," he smirks, "I like freeing little birds from their predicaments."

She pauses. "What are you expecting out of it? Your hand up my skirt? My heart?" It's meant to be acerbic, but when she actually hears it and envisions it, she starts to wish that she didn't open her mouth at all. It's the blood talking.

Kol chuckles. "You wouldn't want to give me those things. I wouldn't let go of a woman like you." Just the glint in his eye is enough to force a skip of life in her heart. "I'm as terrible as they come."

The worst thing about what he's saying is how paradoxical it is, warning her of the danger while oozing the magnetic charm she's supposed to stay away from. There's a small part of her that wonders what it would be like to be close to him. Her fingers itch with curiosity as her gaze sweeps downward from his hair line to his lips, neck to coat. Before she knows it, she's taken a quick glance of his crotch and mentally slaps herself for lingering.

You are _not_ going to go there.

"It's my cousin. But don't hurt him, Kol." She tries to steer the topic somewhere else to ignore how self-conscious she feels about checking him out.

"He won't _die._ I'll just have a little fun." He leans closer. "Then _we_ can have our own sort of fun."

"You're insane _and_ sleazy." And despite knowing this, Caroline speculates every kind of fun there is to be had with a guy like him. _Oh god,_ she closes her eyes and the mild shame rises from her chest, _you're just as sleazy as he is._

"I meant with owing me a favour." A non-sexual one, he insinuates with his tone. He stops for a beat, beaming at her apparent gutter-brained notions. "Actually, I may have something for you to do. You can thank me after I've settled your problem."

She never asked for any help, but Kol doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who takes no for an answer.


	2. A Tiny Bite | The Only Broken Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kol calls in his favour, and Caroline might owe him yet another one.

**III. A Tiny Bite**  
  
About a week later, Caroline is pleased to be able to pull blood from the fridge, sip on a moderate amount slowly, and put it back. That's control right there. She gives herself an imagined pat on the back for remaining injury-free, but she just hopes that it’s not because Mike is ten feet under concrete.  
  
Kol meets her in an apartment, just on the edge of town where the folk hide themselves away and no one looks twice at anyone else. Keyword: shady. The only difference is that instead of keys in her fist, she's got fangs.  
  
"Where is he?" she asks, hands on her hips.  
  
He pours her a drink, which she chooses not to touch. "He'll be back."  
  
The suspicion crawls up her back. "What did you do?" Silence launches her nerves into a panic. "I told you not to hurt him."  
  
"He's alive," Kol assures. "You're here for something else. I'm calling in my favour."  
  
"How do I know you're not lying?" He pulls the phone from his pocket and hands it to her. "I've texted and called him a million times. Don't you th-"  
  
Impatient, he presses a couple of numbers and the contact name 5 shows up. "Hello?"  
  
Caroline gawks at Kol in disbelief, swiping the phone and raising it to her ear. She grills Mike on his disappearance, listening for telltale signs of extreme distress. From lost appendages or starvation, maybe.  
  
Mike only tells her that he can't speak to her any longer and that he's very sorry for hunting her vampire ass down. When she hears the sound of the receiver, she slouches.  
  
Kol pries his phone gently from her fingers, proud of his handiwork. "Fear is a wonderful thing. Nothing puts fear in a man’s heart like the sound of a power saw."  
  
"You terrorized him," she guesses, unimpressed. Of course he would.  
  
"He won't be bothering you again because I compelled him not to. The rest were just precautionary measures."  
  
Precautionary. She doesn't like the sound of that. It's not really a consolation, but Caroline is nevertheless slightly relieved to know that no one has died. Not yet, anyway.  
  
"So what am I doing here?"  
  
Kol steps forward. "You're going to let me drink from you."  
  
She gets up from her seat immediately. "I'm not-"  
  
"You are, because I need the blood of another vampire for the spell." He mirrors her movement so she'll think twice about running. "Just this, and I'll be out of your hair."  
  
The agitated blonde is gravely offended that she would be someone else's blood bag. "You cursed or something?"When he doesn't answer, she laughs out of bitter surprise. "You  _are_ cursed. You're so cursed. You've got the magical version of an STD." Then it occurs to her. "You don't need me. You could go for any other vamp cruising town."  
  
He doesn't want any other vamp. He's already picked her. It's obvious to anyone, but she thinks she's going to feel good hearing it directly from him.  
  
Kol doesn't give her that satisfaction. "It'll be quick," he promises, "Just a little bite. Nothing life-threatening."  
  
“...Knife,” she indicates after a pause, somewhat considering its usefulness in a situation like this.  
  
“No knife,” he counters, to which she instinctively prepares herself to dodge. Until he taunts her. “Are you afraid of me?” He circles her like a predator, clearly trying to bait her into it.  
  
It's working. She would never admit to being scared of Kol.  
  
Biting her lip, she settles back down in the chair. "Get it over and done with."  
  
Caroline tugs her sleeve up and offers her wrist to him, fist clenched tightly. She mentally prepares for the incoming sting of fangs, but fingers caress the path up her arm instead. The curve of her ear is traced with his breathing, and she feels the insistent press of his body into hers from behind as he nudges the fabric of her dress aside to expose more of her shoulder.  
  
This is nothing, she tells herself. He’s merely being opportunistic. It's totally normal for feeding to be part utility and part seduction.  
  
Though, okay, she supposes that this is about 70% seduction because he doesn't have to lay a hand on any part of her at all for whatever bullshit curse he wants lifted. Unfortunately for Caroline, her body is responding - the very touch of him forms a warm knot in her abdomen and makes the air hitch in the pit of her lungs. When his lips graze her neck, her hand opens up and Kol slips his palm onto hers, sorely reminding her of just how long it’s been since she's let anyone get this physical with her.  
  
Too long.  
  
Her skin finally breaks and she tenses. It's the smell of her own blood in the air that causes her to flinch, and Kol's grip turns vice-like when he senses her pulling away. Caroline swallows her noise of discomfort as he wraps his other arm around her waist to still her. While he continues drawing from her with deep pressure, it results in the most peculiar sensation skittering up and down her spine.  
  
Initially, she finds it jarring, but the more he drinks, the more open she is to the idea of letting him really  _touch_ her.  
  
"Relax, darling," he says, then affectionately paints a long line across his fresh mark on her with his tongue. "I'm almost done."  
  
It evolves into well-placed kisses, followed by a gentle squeeze of her hand in his.  
  
Kol eventually removes himself from her space, thumbing under his lip to taste her again. She reaches for tissues to pat down her wound, trying not to seem too affected by the whole experience, but too late - she reprimands herself silently for wondering if he was in it for more than just the blood. It should be obvious, but it's not.  
  
On a scale of one to ten, she gives herself an  _I don't want to think about his hands or mouth or what I think was against my ass._ Or how good he looks now, mussed, intoxicated,  _starving._  
  
Grabbing the glass full of scotch she previously rejected, Caroline tips her head back and lets out a steady breath.  
  
By some sort of formality, Kol extends a hand as a gesture of appreciation, which is the last thing she expects because you don’t just suck on someone’s neck and say thank you.  
  
It bothers her that she doesn’t just want a handshake either.  
  
Caroline stares at him, pondering his real intentions for the briefest moment. Then she chooses, with much difficulty, to ignore his silly display of primness. She disappears from his apartment quickly, at the same speed that her sanity had been lost when she let him bite her in the first place.  
  
It was  _exciting._  
  
  


  
  
 **IV. The Only Broken Thing**  
  
How embarrassing.  
  
She had travelled the scenic route through a clearing on her way home, just to bask in the moonglow and smell the crispness of nighttime air. She wanted time to herself.  
  
So she walked, taking lighthearted steps and feeling particularly grateful for having an uneventful, normal type life on the supernatural front. Left in peace, and to her own devices.  
  
Her only mistake was allowing herself to think that it would last. Otherwise she might have missed the bear trap.  
  
She had tried to separate the bloodied jaws, but her hands blistered from the familiar burn of vervain and she let go. Bad idea.  
  
Now she sits in the grass, steady vapor rising from her shin in smoky tendrils. She’s got a seasoned threshold for pain, but this makes the top five on her list of most ridiculous sustained injuries. Extra points for being a total accident.  
  
Looking for anything that could help her, Caroline attempts to limp over to a tree with the iron teeth still clamped down on her. Another terrible idea. It’s too unbearable to carry the weight of it, and eventually she stops moving altogether because it seems like she might just sever it completely. Do vampires regenerate their lost limbs like lizards? She doesn’t know. Peg legs aren’t exactly nautical chic.  
  
"Stupid!" she yells, hoping someone and no one will find her.  
  
As if on cue, a passerby halts in his tracks and turns his head, intrigued. When she sees who it is, the urge to free herself shifts into high gear.  
  
It just gets worse, doesn’t it? Might as well run her over with a pickup and end it all now.  
  
“My, my, look at that. Caught, are we?”  
  
Kol, looking ever the sly fox, strides towards her. Caroline grimaces in both pain and humiliation as he crouches, observing her the way a little boy does before he takes an ensnared hare home to his mother for dinner.  
  
“Laugh it up,” she says, gesturing at him to not come any closer. “Go away. I can do this myself.”  
  
“Clearly,” he says to her, waiting. “Please, do continue.”  
  
Her brow wrinkles, unhappy that he’d test her on it. Not one to favour appearing weak, Caroline takes a deep breath.  
  
Flesh starts to hiss and the floral scent of vervain wafts upward as she garners all her strength to pull apart the mouth of the trap. It turns from fire to ice on her skin, and her arms are unsteady in their effort to split the teeth far enough for her to lift her leg out of it.  
  
One of her hands slip.  
  
Her eyes squeeze shut, expecting the loud snap of metal and bone to be the preface for her screaming, but it never comes. She sneaks a peek, only to discover that Kol is prying the device apart like he’s cracking open a book. His hands are smoking, yet he appears to be relatively unaffected by it.  
  
“Show off,” she mutters, sliding away quickly. There’s little relief in it, but at least she isn’t trapped anymore. Kol lets the contraption go with a resonant clap of metal and she winces - imagine what that would’ve been like.  
  
He stands, dusting his dark jeans off and sticks his hand out.  
  
Caroline frowns. Does she owe him something else now?  
  
Unfortunately for her, she's in no condition to walk, so she grudgingly accepts his help on the logic that sucking it up and having him aid her is far better than crawling home and chewing on someone for their blood. That leg's got to be broken in crazy places. And once the adrenaline wears off...  
  
"Alright now darling, I'm here," Kol says, in a manner that's oddly endearing, suited more for a child with scraped knees. He lifts her, throwing her arm over his shoulder, and rests a palm on her hip for balance. "Point the way."  
  
With a steadfast grip on the thigh of her own jeans, Caroline and Kol both haul her ass home.  
  


  
  
  
Kol doesn't have an invitation her house, so he sets her down on the old chair on her porch. On one knee he inspects the extent of her injuries before he tells her to wait for him.  
  
As if she has any other choice.  
  
He returns with a small number of things - most importantly, a warm mug of blood in tow, which Caroline accepts gratefully. The taste of it instantly gives away that it's fresh, but she isn't going to ask him about its source - he can keep it anonymous. Sometimes it's just better not to know things.  
  
Kol plops down in front of her and carefully straightens her leg.  
  
"Hurts, doesn't it?" She knows it's rhetorical, so she bites her tongue to stop the sarcasm from finding its way out of her mouth.  
  
The gleam of a pair of scissors causes a tiny alarm. "Don't you dare."  
  
Kol disregards her, defiantly tugging the denim taut at her ankle and snipping up to her knee. Caroline purses her lips. "You're never going to salvage these anyway," he comments, peeling it apart to reveal the full extent of her injury. Yeah, it's not pretty.  
  
"Hold my hand." Caroline stares, apprehensive. But he seems to know what he’s doing, so she sets her mug down and accedes. "Okay, don't be mad-"  
  
Before she realises what's happening, he sticks one of his fingers in her shin and she screams. Hoarsely, until her voice nearly gives out because what in god’s  _name_  is he even thinking-  
  
 _Oh Jesus Christ._  It’s so disabling that she can barely register anything else. The strain of her gritting teeth rides to her fingernails, a sharp nerve-chewing tension so strong that it may have jump-started her heart. Kol's lucky that he's got the strength to withstand her hand-crushing death grip, which, by the way, is doing nothing to tame the agony.  
  
He wiggles his index to push something back into place; the tears are in free flow and the pain is so blinding that her loud protests of hurt sound more like choked, hysterical laughter. What she really means to say through the sobs is,  _You fucking asshole._ She’s probably gone through worse, but it’s suffering all the same.  
  
"Okay, you're okay," he says again, and Caroline gasps for air, more a coping mechanism than necessity as he removes his intrusive index from her. She feels his palm slip from her own, then his thumb meeting her wet cheek in an attempt to comfort. Ugh. No. That adoring gaze isn’t helping. Okay, maybe it makes her feel a little better. Only a little.  
  
Kol then produces a small square packet from his back pocket. Caroline doesn't even care what the slime in it is – the only thing that matters is that it's cool to the touch and the relief is instantaneous when he slathers it onto her calf.  
  
Fishing rolls of gauze from the pocket of his coat, Kol bundles her up and rips the excess off. "You'd make a pretty good medic in the second world war," she says of his skill.  
  
“I was in a box that era. Apparently I missed some fun times." Caroline watches him casually clean blood and mud off his fingers with the remainder of the dressing. "When you live this long, you pick up a few things. Underneath that," he nods at his handiwork, "is a little concoction of Aztec clay, nightshade, the beaks and wings of things."  
  
"That’s quite the recipe," she says, feeling a numbness fanning out from the main point of injury. The discomfort dissipates almost immediately - it's got to be magic. There's no other way this is working so fast.  
  
“I didn’t make any of it. It was given to me by a very… disciplined witch, some centuries ago. Strong, compassionate woman. Didn't let anyone stop her for anything.”  
  
Kol looks at her like he means to draw a similarity, but he says nothing. She does, however, sense a deeper, more sentimental history behind the words, which piques her interest because it points to a very real possibility that Kol had been, once upon a time, a one-woman, completely committed, love-struck monster. "Sounds like you were into kinda into her," Caroline prods.  
  
“Maybe I was,” he responds solemnly, tossing away soiled gauze. “We wandered together for a long time."  
  
"And?"  
  
"And that's it." The reply is curt, and slams the conversation into a brick wall. "We're not going to get into it." He gets up from his spot and dusts his hands off, ready to leave.  
  
Caroline glares. She doesn't like the way he cuts her off.  
  
 “We’re going go into it," she starts. "We're going to go into it because you show up out of nowhere after weeks of radio silence. And then you make me a tourniquet for my mincemeat self. And  _then_  you expect me to be okay with your Mr Mystery routine.” It’s stupid, really. The more she thinks about it, the tougher it is for her to stave her rising temper.  
  
“And when you  _bit_   _me-_ ”  _Yes, Care, you bring that up too,_  “-you just what? Shake my hand? I let you drink the blood straight from my neck and I don't even get asked for a frickin' coffee. So yeah, I deserve to know a little of the man I'm talking to, with minimal bullshit."  
  
"I have no obligation to sit around and discuss who I loved or didn't love a million years ago," Kol replies, just as annoyed. "Did you want a date out of all of this? Is that why you're mad?  
  
"Or did you just want to have sex?"  
  
Her anger fizzles instantly. In her head, Caroline is covering her hands with her face. No, she's crawling under her thickest duvet, the deepest grave, and living there for all eternity.  
  
Oh god. He's picked up on it, hasn’t he? Her weakness for good bone structure; the accent. And how she can’t help but be drawn to his allure, that deceivingly winsome grin under the deep pools of darkness in his eyes. Doomed. She’s doomed.  
  
Kol shakes his head. "I'm not daft, Caroline. I've seen the way you look at me."  
  
The blonde vampire frowns hard, trying to physically suppress a hot flush from colouring her head to toe, bashful all of a sudden. She wants to look away, but the truth in his words will be deathly obvious. "You think I don't  _know_  what you want?" Kol bends, moving his face closer to hers so that there’s nowhere else for her to turn. "I could smell it on your skin. Taste it in my mouth. I could've slid my fingers under your dress and I  _know_  that I would’ve found you absolutely  _soaked_  for me. And I’d have gone for it.  
  
"But going down that road is lunacy. Love is lunacy."  
  
Taken aback, Caroline folds her arms. "Who says I'm going to  _love_  you?"  
  
"Do you honestly think that we would be a one-time thing? Just jump into bed and be done with it?" A sardonic smile spreads across his face. "You know I'd never let that happen. I'd keep you, and destroy you; I'd end up breaking you in half. And it'd be such a pity to wreck a beautiful thing." Because he's just that type of guy, who fucks you and kisses you and offends you and loves you all at the same time, unwilling and unable to respect the boundaries and labels that she'd typically assign to a casual relationship.  
  
This is his warning to her. "The sex would've been great, though," he adds, like he's thought about it  _that_  many times to be sure. Caroline is tongue-tied for the moment, absorbing his meaning and assessing the gravity of the hole she's managed to dig herself into.  
  
Kol steps off the porch. "Another twenty minutes and you can take that off." She stares at him. "The wrap." He gestures at her leg.  
  
She ignores it. "...You don't know me." The words come slowly, because she's thinking aloud, attempting to understand what he's trying to do and say by pushing her away and reeling her in all at once. "You act like you do. You think you can do anything you want."  
  
"I could say the same to you," he counters.  
  
"I'm not that reckless."  
  
Finding it ludicrous, Kol snorts. "You're the one who let me bite you." He ends with a playful nip of his teeth in her general direction. "I suppose we'll have to start getting familiar with each other, then."  
  
There's no doubt that the encounter leaves her perturbed, but as the older vampire steps away and disappears into the dawn, Caroline can't help but feel that she'd just sat through a very long-winded invitation to... sleep with him? Date him? She isn't even sure. She was too busy fighting mental images of his feral touch, gliding and tracing and curious.  
  
It's not the proposition itself that boggles her mind, paradoxical as it had been. The fact that it doesn't drive her away, even if it opens pandora's box of Mikaelson-branded insanity - it scares her, because it means he could be right.  
  
She might be reckless, but it could be worth it.


	3. Hurts You More Than Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline discovers that Kol hasn't been completely honest.

You want him, you have to love him. Because that's what he's going to do to you. And it could be your death.  
  
Caroline has spent days torturing herself. She wants to hide out in her room and never see the light of day again, classes be damned. How do you even talk about it? Who do you even say it to? Instead she chooses to go window shopping, or makes lists. Lists and lists, on post-its and notebooks and Evernote files. Anything to parry all thoughts to do with the night of the bear trap.  
  
There are times when she's talking to someone and it rests heavy on her tongue, ready to slip out and into the ears of someone else. She wants to sit down and have someone grab her shoulders and give her a hard shake. Have them tell her that her interest in Kol is unconscionable. It could be Matt, throwing down a dishcloth and pep-talking her through the list of big cons. It could even be Damon, who'd most likely call her an idiot.  _Just tell me that I'm crazy._  
  
She feels crazy.  
  
The thing is, every time she's about to part her lips and let the truth run free, something stops her from taking the leap. It's beyond the fear of having to deal with the judgment and cutting opinions of her friends.  
  
Caroline actually wants to have a go at Kol.  
  
Somehow the idea of loving him as a consequence doesn't intimidate her as much as it should. Nobody will let her do it if she confides in them. So... Secret it is.  
  
Kol texts her on a Friday night, which makes her weary of the intention behind it. _Not going out?_  
  
She only responds after doing the dishes. Nothing drives people crazier than a read-but-unattended text.  _No._  
  
The phone buzzes shortly after.  _Do you want company?_  
  
Her thumb hovers over the N on the screen, considering. Then she sets it down, staring until it goes dark with idleness.  
  
What she wants is far from healthy. This isn’t something she's willing to deal with at the moment, even if she’s on the cusp of something.  
  
A chime fills her house. Her mother’s voice projects from the broom closet. “Could you get the door?”  
  
Caroline glances at the counter again, where her cell rests. No way. He wouldn’t dare.  
  
Her mom calls out again, this time less amiably. Playing the filial child, Caroline takes slow steps toward her front door, pausing with her fingers on the handle. She tells herself not to let anyone see him, no matter what he says or does, lest he receive an invitation. And then she opens the door.  
  
It’s not him. Her arms fold. "...Mike?" Caroline looks at the large duffel slung over his shoulder, grey and much too full for swinging by to say hi.  
  
Her cousin smiles and nudges his way past her. "Yo."  
  
“You’re… back,” she trails off, noting his spritely step. For someone whose bits had been uncomfortably close to a power saw, this is more than disturbing behaviour.  
  
“I am,” he replies, “Sheriff home?” Caroline calls for her loudly, and her mom appears with a rag in hand.  
  
“Mikey," she addresses him, surprised, and also noticing his choice of baggage. "Did you need a place to stay?”  
  
“Uh,” he looks around uneasily, “You asked me to crash with you guys for awhile?”  
  
Liz cocks her head back and wrinkles her nose at the detail. Her daughter, on the other hand, is much quicker in adding things up, and when the pieces start to fit, she feels a deep roiling start in the pit of her stomach.  
  
"I asked him," Caroline volunteers falsely. "Again. 'Cause, y' know, yay to hanging out and stuff." Her mother regards her with narrowed eyes, then asks her to place fresh towels in the guest bedroom. Young Forbes races towards a more isolated part of the house, tugging Mike by the arm as fast as humanly possible.  
  
At the laundry area, she halts, spinning to face him. "You were here more than a couple of weeks ago. Do you remember that?"  
  
“What? No," he replies incredulously. "Last time I was here was like, in middle school.” He grimaces at her arm still on his, and she relents, knowing that he's completely unfamiliar with the fact that she's a vampire. "Is it your time of the month or something? You're so freakishly strong."  
  
"Ugh, shut up," she snaps. "Didn't Kol tell you to stay away?"  
  
"Who?"  
  
She stares at him. It concerns her how genuinely clueless he seems.  
  
Caroline searches her cousin's eyes. "You don't know," she says in reference to his attack on her, and rushes back to the counter to retrieve her cell.  
  
 _I'm coming over,_ she types, her thumbs frenetic in their jabbing, then informs her mum of the sudden errand she needs to run at Bonnie's for awhile.  
  
But she's going to kick Kol's ass. Won't take more than an hour.

 

  
  
"Hey," Kol greets. His shirt sleeves are rolled up above his elbows and Caroline notices the waning arc of muscle there before she shoves him as hard as she can. "Whoa," he exclaims. "Don't need to get handsy, darling, I haven't even offered you a drink yet."  
  
"What's your game?" She pushes him again. "What's your game?!"  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about." Caroline knows he’s prepared for another hit, so she throws him off by striding over to his tiny, open kitchen in three easy steps and fetches a knife from its block.  
  
"Do you know how stupid it is to be bullshitting me right now?"  
  
Kol looks at the weapon, unalarmed. "You know that can't hurt me."  
  
She twirls it in her hand. "Oh, you  _know_  I can make it hurt. Especially when I'm home, and I see Mike, and he has no recollection whatsoever of nearly killing me or who you are. And I thought, who's the only other vamp in the entire universe that knows anything about this and could possibly brainwipe my cousin into oblivion?"  
  
Leaning on the counter, the Original vampire cracks a faint smile. "I didn't compel him again." Kol moves forward and Caroline feels his hand curve around her knife-wielding one when she raises it up in defense. "He just reset."

Reset? "Excuse me?"  
  
"When he was done," he tightens until his knuckles go white, "he went back to the way he was before I met him. Now let’s put this down."  
  
She swallows a deep breath and says very slowly, "Done with what?"  
  
Kol doesn't have to say it for her to know the answer. She only has to look at his face up close to see the knowing gleam in his eye. "Helping me see what you're made of. I suppose I should've killed him instead. An oversight."  
  
It takes a second for her to realize what he’s saying. “You’re psycho.”  
  
Completely. Utterly. A chill passes through her, thinking of every instance that she might have thought was thanks to Mike, but had really been  _Kol,_ watching, waiting. Testing her waters.  
  
"Oh, don't be like that," he says of the look on her face. “You're quite the specimen.”  
  
Caroline tries to budge, but his thumb is resting on a spot of her wrist that she has no doubt will snap if he applies the right pressure. So in a moment of pure strategy, she loosens her grip to let him take the knife from her and lay it on the counter where it's not quite in reach.  
  
"I knew it." Checking her eyes on the first night and helping her, and the bear trap; that was all smoke and mirrors. "The trap," she says aloud, the ghost snap of cold metal causing her to wince. "Even the trap."  
  
He chuckles. "No, that was all you, I swear," he says, as if swearing now counted for anything.  
  
Both her hands press to her hairline as she tries to come to terms with the revelation. "Why would you even do this?" The more she thinks about it as Kol having fun at her expense, the more pissed off she gets. 'You could've killed me, and you lied to me. Here I was, looking at you with your stupid hair, in your stupid shirt with the-" she gesticulates wildly at his arms, unable to find the right descriptors for how excellent they look, "-thinking, hey, maybe missing the rerun marathon of The Bachelor is going to be worth it."  
  
She's the stupid one. Ugh.  
  
Kol shakes his head. "Don’t tell me that you were so naïve to think that I could've  _never_  lied to you. I was just about to say how impressed I was."  
  
Caroline isn't interested in his opinion of her. "So did you? Lie bout everything?" Her mind flits to his unwillingness to divulge his history. Was it a sensitive topic, or had he run out of creative inspiration? And all the things that he did to make sure he stayed in her head. Can a person fabricate  _chemistry?_  
  
"Sometimes it takes a bit of truth to spin the best stories."  
  
This makes her eyes roll. "Spare me the cheese."  
  
Kol's steely expression doesn't budge. "Whether I lied or not, you know one thing is real - you want me to want you."  
  
Caroline opens her mouth to counter it, but fails to grasp the words. She isn't sure if it's because it sounds so heinously pompous or it's kind of, sort of, maybe... true.  
  
"Well, you don't have to say anything. It's all in the eyes." He glances at her mouth. Then he returns to her blues. She takes the time to study him as well, his parted lips, heavy lids.  
  
She sees it. Feels it. You can't manufacture this kind of attraction.  
  
"So what's your analysis, Kol?" She purposely draws out his name with a curl of her tongue, both antagonistic and coy.  
  
"More of advice, really." He leans closer, and Caroline starts to catch the warm scent of spice on his skin. "Don't cage yourself up anymore. Live a little. Be bad. You might explode one day if you keep it all inside, you know. And I'm not going to be the one to reel you in, because, well... that wouldn't be fun, would it?  
  
"You're a  _vampire,_ as dark as they come. And you love the danger the same way you love me." Fingers pick at the blonde locks on her shoulders.  
  
"I don't love you." She looks down, but doesn't recoil from him.  
  
Kol tilts her chin upward. “You're already halfway there.”  
  
She lets herself pour all her feelings into it when he kisses her, blood rising as his tongue slides along her lower lip and she returns it with a gentle lick of her own. The ache begins to well up inside, the same way her cravings start to roar.  
  
God, it's been awhile. A long while. She feels a hand drag from her neck, down her chest and plant on her hip, and just having him tease her mouth is making the idea of her ripping his shirt apart and climbing on top of him so very, very appealing.  
  
Too bad her hatred of being lied to is way headier than her lust. Caroline uses her weight to move him backwards and pin him against the counter to deftly slip her fingers around dark wood.  
  
The sharp length of cold steel plunges into the small of Kol's back, but that's not quite enough – she wiggles the blade and pulls it diagonally across to his shoulder, letting the smell of blood permeate the air. It's evident from his abruptly cut yelp that she hit something important.  
  
He'll live.  
  
Her lips meet the corner of his open mouth of pure shock. Or is it pain? Maybe both. "Don't be like that," she softly says to him, "I'm only letting off a little steam."  
  
Kol slides down to the floor when she releases him, annoyed grimace fixed on her. Crouching, Caroline's tongue darts out to clean the speckles of his blood off her hand, unapologetic in nearly nicking his thumb when she tosses the knife at him.  
  
"Next time," she says, "just ask me out on a date."


	4. Open Wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's the consequence for knifing someone?

What Caroline thinks is the beginning of a long lull period of action in her life is cut short by a certain dark-haired Mikaelson when he breaks the frame of her front door by kicking the handle in. The crack is so loud that she leaps out of her bed and dashes from her room.  
  
“You’re  _not_  invited,” she yells, both appalled and perplexed that he’s actually standing in her  _house_ , where nobody but her mom can give vampires the permission to enter. Permission that Kol isn't supposed to have.  
  
But that should be the least of her worries right now.  
  
Caroline backs up as quickly as he strides toward her, the toxic rage radiating from him. She knows that he's pissed when it shows up on his skin, red to the end of his ears.  
  
"Tell me," he snaps, speeding up as she leaps over her couch for cover, "what the fuck were you thinking when you stabbed me in the back?" Kol's violent kick sends a vase and the table it once stood on flying.  
  
With a sudden crash, Caroline watches the sofa flip before her very eyes. "Stop wrecking my house!" she protests angrily. "Stop-"  
  
His hand wraps around her slender neck, pinning her against the wall. "Tell me why I shouldn't just rip your head from your shoulders."  
  
"You deserved it," she chokes out unapologetically, fingers clawing at his forearm. She doesn’t need the breath all that much, but having her windpipe crushed isn’t exactly a pleasant experience either. “You lied to me and,” she gasps the rest of her reply hoarsely, “you’d miss me.”  
  
Kol’s jaw clenches. He can clench all he wants. Caroline’s not going to take anything back.  
  
She swings her leg up in a desperate attempt to somehow catch him in an armbar with the full weight of her body, but instead ends up scissored around his waist.  
  
Well... As long as he doesn't end up on top.  
  
They scramble on the floor in a mess of limbs; Caroline is flailing wildly and Kol's on his side, trying desperately to gain the upper hand. Eventually, he stops pushing back and simply resigns to having both her hands press his into the scratched up carpet on either side of his head.  
  
He isn't smiling, but doesn't look as livid as he did before.  
  
"You are so twisted," she narrows her eyes at him. "What's so hard about doing things the  _normal_ way?"  
  
"There's nothing  _normal_  about either of us. Besides, it's boring."  
  
Caroline picks herself of off him and folds her arms. "You're just afraid of being ordinary."  
  
He rises to his feet.  
  
"It's been you against the world for so long that you don't know how much of a total basket case you're being. Nobody's asking you to prove anything." And still, it annoys her so much that the volatility of his dysfunction is somewhat interesting. "Ever just go with the flow? Take it easy? Or has it always been 'terrorize a romantic prospect until she surrenders'? Things don’t have to be so  _out there_."  
  
Kol shakes his head and lets out a bitter chuckle. "I'm not going to hold your hand and prance around in your comfort zone like one of your highschool boyfriends. But since you want to be trapped in your own little universe," he opens his arms in a defiant taunt, "let's do it your way, and put ourselves through an eternity of misery and falsehood. I know what you really want, and need, because I see the signs, and have the same desires, and it doesn't look anything like the fucking new age romance novel you just described."  
  
Now, Caroline's never wanted to hit someone in the mouth this hard before. But the reasons behind it are divergent - he just likened her opinion to the questionable scraps of a literary genre; conversely, the inkling of denial she’s felt since the start of this conversation is exacerbated by the fact that he's not completely off the mark about it. She doesn't like being wrong.  
  
“Fine,” she says, in a world where  _fine_  rarely ever is what it really means, "I like my comfort zone. But I'm not stuck." She flattens her palm against his chest, feeling a very slow, faint lifting and waning underneath, as if to prove some defiance or courage on her part. She should be used to the near-still, steady pumping of a person not quite dead, but she isn't.  
  
It only occurs to her how much he affects her when she pulls her hand away and presses it into her abdomen to stop herself from looking like she was caught up in a moment.  
  
But then he gazes. It's somewhere between protest and curiosity, a fine balance of suspicion and willingness. Ever so quietly and turning the air around them into a heavy vapour of long, pulling tension, Caroline once again lifts her arm to slip a hand under wrinkled leather.  
  
Ignition.  
  
She strips Kol of his jacket, immediately wanting to feel him. Feel him through his clothes. Feel his breath lick up her neck and between her thighs. She wants to feel the madness overtake her, his twisted darkness creep into her soul. Caroline leans in to capture his mouth with her own, aching for him to do more than just hesitate at her kiss - she doesn't blame him, considering what had happened the last time he went in for one.  
  
His resistance melts away against the teasing press of her lips, slow and easy kisses that coax the stifled noise he's kept inside himself all this while. It’s almost as if he'd been telling himself not to concede, but he's failing miserably as his arms begin to curve around her back and her waist, and parts her lips with the nudge of his tongue.  
  
That's when Caroline says yes through her moan, and Kol gives in to her completely.  
  
Without delay, his fingers trace to the front of her jeans to pop the placket button and tug the zipper down. The tips go searching, dipping low into her panties and finding slick heat that causes her to grasp his hair that much tighter.  
  
Yes, she pants into the corner of his mouth. As he pushes a finger into her depths, all she can think is yes, and how she wants more of him, how bizarre it is for her to want to spread her legs wider, how this is going to end terribly for the both of them, because he’s a mental case, and she’s about to be a mental case, and her world is just splitting at the seams at not knowing what’s going to happen  _after_.  
  
She'll worry about it when they get there.  
  
Caroline pushes Kol's arm away, and it's clothes off from here, tossed denim and cotton and whatever that separates her skin from his. He makes her lean back on the floor and pushes her knees apart, hands kneading their way up her thighs.  
  
He knows she's watching. The way he looks up at her as his thumb sweeps over the crease of her thigh is dark and devilish, and when Caroline finally feels his tongue drag from bottom up, she throws her head back and  _enjoys_  every second of him kissing her  _there_.  
  
Good god. Finally using his mouth for something other than being a smartass.  
  
With each curl of his tongue her body is buzzing; her legs are starting to draw closer together in response to his fevered lapping. But he won't let her escape. Instead, his hands keep her spread and open and she has no choice but to be subject to whatever he wants to make her body feel - shy, worshipped, needing. Things that, perhaps, she had caught a glimpse of during past interactions, but were no more than fleeting indulgences of the imagination.  
  
At the end of it, he has her cupping her own breast and biting her lip as he draws out her climax with a devoted attentiveness to her clit and his fingers thick inside of her.  
  
Caroline twists and rocks against his face, noisy in her uncontrolled appreciation as he drags the digits from her slowly. He only growls.  
  
Rising to his knees, she sees that he's absolutely hard - he's not going to wait. Kol hooks his arms under her legs and drags her still shivering body closer to him, carpet grazing her back. Wasting no time, he guides himself into her in an agonizingly slow glide that tears the moan from her throat.  
  
He holds his breath the entire time. She only realises this at how heavy his sigh is when he's buried to the hilt, chest pressed to hers. "Don't," he tells her when he sees her eyes fall shut. "I want you to look at me."  
  
She complies reluctantly, focused on his face. Kol clenches his jaw, glancing down at her lips and as if satisfied, he draws his hips back and meets with hers again. Then she sees it, the pleasure forming on his face, his mouth opening, closing, every time he gets the angle perfect and rubs the end of his cock against the most tender of her spots.  
  
You watch me, I watch you.  
  
The longer she sets her sights on him, the hotter her body feels. Her back is so raw, and her nails are scratching the fibres out of the carpet as her desire mounts with each greedy thrust. Every time she breaks her gaze from him, he rolls his hips a little deeper.  
  
She can't look at him. When she does, he reads her, and when he reads her, he starts to get a sense of knowing. Then it's less of _fucking_  and becomes more of...  _something else._  
  
It's Caroline's fault for opening the floodgates. She wanted him. He warned her, and she didn't listen. Now she's caught, her voice rising and her cunt aching around him, connecting on levels far more unfamiliar to her than she expected.  
  
"I wanna come," she gasps, the tail end of her confession turning into a pleading sound.  
  
Kol groans at the honesty of it. "Then come," he says, moving faster, helping her peak with her body clinging to him like her life depended on it.  
  
"I want it," she bites down on her lip, this time referring to him, and he seems to understand it from her eyes. "I want it,  _I want it, Iwantit_.”  
  
She goes on encouraging with the most shameless of noises, but it's only until she says,  _I want you_ that he jerks and lowers his face to her shoulder where he whispers back the same thing. The shudder that rocks his body rips through her own. Kol groans again, deep in his chest, still pressing into her even after his release.  
  
Then she feels it, his fingertips finding her clit. Caroline’s thighs squeeze together to pause his body's movement, but there's only so much she can stop. “Shit,” she bucks, mind rocketing to high heaven. With blunt teeth he grazes the bit of her neck that sends the memories charging through her bloodstream – where teeth had been fangs, and a nip had been a hard bite. She thinks of the blood, the smell of it, the taste of it, recalling the pain, and she swears so vehemently in his ear when the pleasure cracks that it eases a coarse laugh from him.  
  
“Control that dirty mouth,” he breathes. From the looks of it, he’s enjoying getting his hand wet, keeping his palm on her until she stops shaking.  
  
For a while, they stay locked in their bared-bodied embrace, reveling in the sweat and smell and starkness of it. "We can't go back from this."  
  
She's thinking aloud, weighing her options and finding that none of them are simple. It's the obvious thing to say, but it needs to be heard.  
  
Kol's hand wanders, moving up her waist and over her breast in a slow, easy slide, like he's trying to soothe her. "Do you want to?"  
  
She waits for the answer, but it never arrives in her head. What is she to think? He compelled her cousin to get to her. She should've gotten a dagger somewhere and put an end to him, but she responded with sex instead. All because he told her that he wanted her. Or it just could've been how he wore his shirt.  
  
Maybe she's the mad one all this while.  
  
"I don't think you can stay away," he adds, not at all trying to make a spectacle of it. "Neither will I. It only takes a taste to start drowning in it."  
  
She would know.  
  
Kol brushes his lips against her ear, "You let go of yourself." She feels his hand settle in the centre of her chest, solid, comforting. "Your body goes so hot and the sweat breaks on your skin... It can make an addict out of anyone."  
  
She pulls away, barely managing to slide out of his needy touch. "Curb it," she says, surveying the disaster that is her living room with a sigh. "I've got a lot of housecleaning to do."  
  
No retort. Caroline dresses, catching from the corner of her eye his look of befuddlement. It's not quite enough to make her smile, but after a long pause, she sees him getting up to lend a hand in setting the couch right.  
  
The sight of his bare ass the whole time while they clean up is what secretly lifts the edges of her mouth.


	5. How Do You Feel?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not easy to hide feelings she's still trying to figure out.

Bonnie's always aware and observant. Caroline’s reminded of this when she desperately tries not to grimace when Bonnie helps her spread body lotion across her shoulders, scented skin softener burning hot and deep into her abrasions like alcohol into a festering wound. She gnaws the inside of her own cheek to force the noise of discomfort down, hoping that it's enough to prevent any questions from coming up.  
  
But Bonnie sees a different thing. "You're getting really red," she pauses application, allowing Caroline a chance to breathe. "Blotchy, even."  
  
Caroline isn't about to confess that she's spent some time with her back against a rug, so she casually shrugs it off and blames it on rough base work in cheerleading.  
  
Elena, overhearing, walks over to examine. She doesn't look convinced.  
  
"Right," Bonnie replies, capping the bottle and handing it back to the cringing blonde. "Anything you want to tell me?"  
  
Yeah, she's been trying to be normal like it was pre-Kol, but it's hard to be furtive when he seeks her out during practice and kisses her just under her ear. "See you later," caressed his voice upon her skin, before he vanished abruptly.  
  
"I'm perfectly fine," Caroline says. As perfectly fine as a person can be after being denied sex under the bleachers with Kol.  
  
As her friends exchange a skeptical look, Caroline packs in her bottle and quickly pulls her tank over her head. "See you guys tomorrow," she says, hoping that neither of her friends have curiosity powerful enough to make them investigate. She isn't sure that they'd like what they find.  
  
  
  
Caroline reaches home to find her mother attending to a flood of paperwork spread around her laptop on the table. Working mode mom. Good. One less person to ask about all the things she’s trying to hide.  
  
She strolls past the stairs, then hears, “Honey, I need to ask you something real quick.”  
  
It doesn’t sound like anything ominous, so she walks over to lend an ear.  
  
Without looking up, the sheriff asks casually, “What do you think if I went on vacation?”  
  
Slightly taken aback, she pauses. “Is this a trick question?” Liz stares pointedly above her reading glasses. “Oh-kay,” Caroline says, getting the message, “Maybe it doesn’t hurt to take a plane to Cancun.”  
  
"Cancun, huh." Front teeth worry at her lip, but she resumes typing. "There was this boy," she says, nails tapping the keyboard at a leisurely pace, "he suggested that I should take a holiday. Do you know a Kol?"  
  
All the blood drains from Caroline's face.  
  
"He came by the house earlier and asked about you." She stops to pick up a pen and scribbles something. "I told him you weren't home."  
  
Surely if the sheriff had learned his last name she would've never let him near the lawn let alone their house. Caroline thanks her mother and briskly travels to her room to make a seriously loud phone call. She almost jumps backward when she swings open her door and finds the object of her annoyance sitting on her bed, all dark autumn colours and well-adjusted hair greeting her.  
  
She can't exactly tell how long he's been there, but from the somewhat rumpled sheets and his apparent restlessness, it's longer than she feels comfortable with. Asking him how he got here without her mom knowing is as useful as telling him to take a hike at this point.  
  
"You're back," she says, trying to keep her tone indifferent. Wouldn’t want to let any of yesterday to get to his head, though it's messing with her plenty more than it does him.  
  
"I am." He leans back, a picture of confidence, lit with a smile. "It's up to you to decide what you want to do with me."  
  
She cocks a brow. "You're going to be disappointed." Maybe it had been a bad idea to let him pull her aside during practice earlier, because she's still struggling to block from her mind the things she  _would_ do with him. Or do  _to_ him.  
  
"I wasn't expecting anything," he says. She can't tell if it's genuine.  
  
"And here you are, at the edge of my bed, waiting for nothing." The swing of her bag, aimed at the spot right beside him brings her closer. She notices that his eyes are particularly drawn to her hip, where a spot of skin shows just above skirt she wears.  
  
Kol calmly reaches out -  _oh don't fall for this, Care, your mom's still around_  - and gathers a fistful of fabric to gently tug her towards him.  
  
"You were waiting for  _me,_ " he replies, hands somehow managing to guide her body onto his lap where her knees are pinned to either side of his hips. One hand lifts her delicate chin while the other races along her thigh, searching. Caroline runs her hand up his chest, thinking,  _clothes, way too much clothes,_ and leans forward to kiss him, but his head pulls back just so he can watch her flush when his fingers graze over damp cotton. "You  _were_ waiting for me."  
  
She hates how right he is.  
  
"I've got assignments," she says, "I don't have time to wait around for some guy to swing by and get his rocks off."  
Kol nudges her panties aside and presses a digit ever so slightly into her. "Some guy," he grits out, disapproving. Caroline's mouth opens in surprise and leans forward, to which he tends to the bare column of her neck with his tongue. She feels him trace a solid line to her clit, smoothing over it before he drags it back and repeats the teasing until she starts to clutch at his shirt, going red under her collar.  
  
All the stroking but never entering turns her so wet that she finds herself nearly pleading for his kiss. He pulls away each time she attempts to claim one, amused at her response when he almost manages to sink the finger deep enough but draws his hand back before it satisfies.  
  
"Don't call me some guy," he says into her collarbone. A palm curves over her ass. "Don't." Caroline's body responds with a jerk when his hand rises and lands with a quick smack.  
  
"Please," she finally whimpers right above his ear. The finger's going over her clit again and she's aching so badly - she can't feel the full pleasure of it and it drives her nuts. It drives her absolutely insane because she knows what it’s like when he wants to get her off and he's just not giving it to her. Her imagination, her memory, everything is an exquisite torture to her, and Kol  _knows_ it. Bastard.  
  
"Don't be a dick," she says, and he begins to ignore her clit entirely as punishment.  
  
"What am I to you, Caroline?“ He increases the speed that he dips into her, which only makes the need worse. She got half a mind to reach down and unbuckle him, but he's got her at an angle that doesn't allow her much room to do anything but tilt forward or back.  
  
The question doesn't help either. It's not exactly easy for her to answer, especially now. She frowns, breathing hard, then shakes her head because she has no idea what the right response is.  
  
Displeased, his wrist stops. "Answer the question," Kol persists.  
  
She goes through every description that pops up in her mind. "You're super annoying," she throws out first, and he smiles at her frustration, "Disturbed," her hand grasps the back of his head, tugging, "And a nuisance," she rounds off. "Definitely not just some guy, I guess."  
  
He flips them over so he's on top. With eyes dark as night, he looks down the length of her body under him. "I'm going to  _fuck you,_ " he promises, voice like gravel gently scraping down her spine.  
  
"Good," she pries his shirt apart. His tone makes her thighs clench in anticipation - god, the way his cock filled her the day before. "Good," she says again, soon forgetting that one of the other things she meant to call him was  _charming._ But he doesn’t need to know that yet. Sex first, feelings later.  
  
  
  
"What business did you have here," Caroline hugs the duvet close to her chest, "Besides... This?"  
  
He looks amused as he pulls on his jeans. "Look at you, being shy and doe-like after all the filthy things that ca-" A pillow flies in his general direction, which he ducks with ease. She finds herself trying to look away when he zips up and picks his shirt off the floor. "Does it matter to you that much?"  
  
It doesn't. At least, she'd like to think so. "I'm just making conversation," she replies.  
  
"Taking an interest in me." Kol glances at her, disbelieving. "Surely you don't want every finicky detail of my mishaps and adventures."  
  
"I have a right to know if I'm sleeping with a serial killer."  
  
"Mass murderer," he corrects. "But you already knew this, long before I touched your pretty face."  
  
"So you're not going to tell me." The very last button slides into place, and she finds herself already missing the sight of the bare muscle that meets the jut of his hip bone.  
  
"I'm not," he says. "And I never will." His roguish smile makes a brief appearance. "Guess you're going to lose some sleep over it."  
  
It bothers her how good he is at yanking her chain, but she won't let him reap the pleasure of seeing her squirm. "I've got better things to worry about."  
  
"You don't have to pretend with me."  
  
Caroline's lips press into a little line. "Says the vampire who lied his way into my bed."  
  
"And yet here I am, having just climbed out of it." Kol sits back down to tend to socks and shoes.  
  
"So how do I know that you're not going to just wipe out the entire Forbes line in one fell swoop tomorrow?”  
  
"You don't," he says. "But there's a vague possibility that you can still convince me not to."  
  
"Me. Convince you." He can't be serious. "Don't be a jerk. It's definitely not going to get you laid."  
  
"Maybe it's not just about getting  _laid._ "  
  
Kol reaches out to cup her cheek, and she finds herself leaning into it ever so slightly. Because he sounds honest, and she can't help but let it stir her heart to life.  _Weak,_ she scolds herself, but thinking that he might pick up on it and respond to her in kind, her hand rises to meet his.  
  
Caroline isn't sure what she expected to happen. He doesn't kiss her goodbye, doesn't touch a hair. He only looks and looks and looks, at her eyes and her mouth, wordless and thick with meaning, knowing full well how antsy she gets when she's forced to guess what's swimming around in that warped mind of his. Then without allowing her fingers to graze his skin, he utters, "Wait for me." He leaves.  
  
He leaves, and she sinks low into her bed and under her covers, hoping that the warm knot in her chest will subside. But his smell is trapped in the cotton of her sheets. There's no escape.  
  
 _Terrible,_ she thinks, pressing her cheek against the mattress.  _He did say he was terrible._  
  
  
  
He doesn't come back; she doesn't know why. All she knows that as the days stretch into weeks, into months, there's no hiding the fact that she does miss him, the presence of him, his air of mystery, the total obliteration of common sense and comfort she feels from just the tender brush of his hand along her jaw.  
  
Aggravating.  
  
There are times when she's on the couch in her living room and she  _remembers,_  while she, along with her best friends, bury their noses in textbooks for finals, full of highlights in every colour of the rainbow. The rip in the carpet reminds her of his hands; the draft that enters the house by a window left open makes her think of his bite.  
  
Caroline can move on and be entangled in other flings of the summertime, trading patience for quick kisses and gropes at frat parties where the wells of youth teem with the promise of new and unforgettable experiences. She can easily take what she had with Kol and chalk it up to a good, wild time, a romantic anomaly in her otherwise mundane routine of a vampire's life in Virginia. It's not like they had spent days and nights attached at the hip. No one had said anything about love, or alluded to exclusivity of any sort. She's free to do as she pleases.  
  
But she also remembers that he told her to wait. Strangely, for some reason, she does.


	6. A Relapse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are some things you just can't shake.

"You're in a mood."  
  
She isn't, not really. Caroline's been staring at the screen for hours, obsessing over pinks and greys, careful and discerning over the use of geometry, asking Bonnie to be her fresh pair of eyes. There's just nothing incredibly exciting about prepping a flyer for a party she isn't organizing, but if she's going to put her name on something, she might as well go all out.  
  
The young blonde takes a long sip from her straw, blood slowly draining from her mug. "Something's missing," she says, turning her laptop to let Bonnie see.  
  
"It looks great," comes the familiar sigh.  
  
"Great isn't mindblowing," Caroline groans, planting her forehead on the table.  
  
"You need a break." Bonnie grabs her friend's hand in solace and slowly rises from the chair. "I'll be back with Chunky Monkey."  
  
Only the best of friends know exactly what you need when you're having a meltdown.  
  
"Hey Caroline," she hears, someone male, distinctly not Bonnie. When she lifts her head, she watches Mike tread over toward her with a duffel over his shoulder.  
  
"What are you even doing here?"  
  
"I don't know." He looks around, heavily grimacing. "I really don't."  
  
Oh boy. All the alarms go off in her head, but she can't jump to a conclusion just yet. "You forgot something?"  
  
"You know that feeling you get when you walk into a room to do something and it completely slips your mind when you're three steps in?"  
  
Caroline nods slowly.  
  
"I kinda feel like I walked all the way from  _home._ "  
  
Home isn't even in Virginia.  
  
"I kinda feel like I've been walking forever, actually."  
  
She closes her eyes and purses her lips.  
  
"Hey Mike," greets Bonnie, who sets down two bowls and the ice cream tub. "You visiting?"  
  
No time for scooping. Caroline picks up a spoon and stabs it into a banana chunk. Mike isn’t visiting, but she knows  _who is._  
  


  
  
Kol's number hasn't been in service since he bolted, which annoys her to no end because she doesn't know how else she can reach him to plant a round-toed shoe in his ass.  
  
He has to come to  _her._ Which means he's only found when he wants to be.  
  
Somehow the prospect of him making a surprise appearance while she's in the middle of an organizational tragedy stirs more than just a little anxiety in her chest.  
  
Caroline puts the silkscreened banner up over the entrance of the frat house. She nearly loses her footing on the ladder when she hears the staccato clip clop of shoes approach, but it's only one of the frat brothers late for his play rehearsal.  
  
Has Kol ever worn dressy shoes to anywhere other than a ball?  
  
She's sitting in a group meeting about logistics - band, DJ, ping pong table, dry ice. They're lacking two bottles of Chivas from the litter of assorted drinks they bought during their latest alcohol run. The person in-charge of the booze accuses the fraternity, cursing the venue decision. He then begrudgingly shoves the crumpled purchase order under resting fingers.  
  
It’s not really her problem, but Caroline looks at the long list.  
  
What does Kol like to drink?  
  
Day before the party. she gathers stacks of paper wrist tags, plastic chips, and reviews her clipboard of chicken-scratching itinerary notes. Across the bottom is an alien scrawl of red ink - DON'T FORGET TO HAVE FUN.  
  
She frowns.  
  
Does Kol's handwriting look anything like this?  
  
People are pouring into the yard where actual table tennis is being played. Bonnie tells her that she's doing good; for an event that makes people pay for their drinks on top of a cover charge, the turnout is surprisingly high.  
  
Caroline shrugs, scanning the premises. She would’ve done a number of things differently, but she’s only in charge of the marketing and décor (which is, obviously, impeccable).  
  
“Are you looking for someone?” asks Bonnie.  
  
Caroline eyes every dark-haired male in the room with a strong brow ridge. No, that one has a nose that’s too sharp. That one has too-round eyes – far too doe-like for her taste. The one by the regal Louis XIII display lacks the all-important cleft in the chin, where she once identified as her bullseye for cheekiness gone overboard. She can’t possibly feel  _satisfied_  about hitting someone the face when they don't have a tiny chin dimple.  
  
 _Maybe someone’s looking for me,_ she thinks,  _but maybe I’m wrong._  
  
She absently picks up a downturned glass, signaling her best friend to follow suit. “We should get in on the tasting.” It’s easier to keep a lookout when you’re pretending to be busy.  
  
  
  
Hours later, Caroline finds her head swimming beneath a thin film of intoxication nearly two hours later as she listens to clusters of young adults trying to make philosophical sense of scotch whiskies.  
  
Whatever. Everything starts to feel the same on the tongue after a certain point, really, but at least it helps her stop worrying about being on the brink of an Original ambush. That, and people can finally stop mistaking her narrow-eyed once overs for flirting.  
  
  


  
It’s nearly 3AM. Caroline tips back her last glass for the night and breathes a sigh, short and sharp. No Mikaelson in sight.  
  
Funny that she thought that he might have come back for her when he’s more likely to just revisit Mike and send him crossing state lines by foot for a chuckle.  
  
She wants to roll her eyes, because that’s exactly the kind of thing that she imagines would tickle Kol. Small, childish, stupid everyday amusements that keep him busy between the mysterious business transactions he won’t tell her about. That she’ll never get to uncover.  
  
Out of habit she glances at her phone, hoping for an unread message, but there’s nothing, and no one, and she’s getting a little bit bored. She texts Bonnie, who’s tearing it up at table tennis, that she’s going to head back to their dorm to crash.  
  
Caroline does a final visual sweep of the house - still nothing. And she was so sure about it.  
  
It doesn't sit well with her, knowing that it's just in her head.  
  


  
  
One; take a hot shower. She's been told countless times that this is the least wise thing a person can do after drinking, but vampires don't have to play by the rules.  
  
Two; check the Whitmore Wire to see if anyone's dropped an informal feature about the party. It'll help her decide if departing from the traditional rager is a worthy endeavour for the future.  
  
Three; sleep. Long, tranquil shut eye. She can always get to the bottom of Mike's weird problems when she heads home for the weekend. Her bed beckons from beyond the walls, and she'll gladly fall into it.  
  
Caroline sticks her key in the lock and twists once. She pauses. It should be two to open the door.  
  
With her palm to varnished mahogany, she gives a tiny push.  
  
 _Oh no._  
  
“Miss me?”  
  
 _No._  
  
"Or maybe you need a little refresher?"  
  
A breath. Her lungs expand. Exhale... Steady now.  
  
Caroline stares at him, his head lolled back off the edge of her bed, blanketed in a deluge of her scarves. His face is lit with an old fondness as he casually twirls the soft fringes of one of her summer shawls.  
  
He's been waiting, exactly the way he had on the day he left her hanging. Same stupid grin, annoying in every way whether upside down or right side up. All the mischief in his body gathers in his eyes and they practically  _twinkle_  at the sight of her wide-eyed silence.  
  
She isn't thrilled that her gut had been right all along.  
  
She puts her hand on the handle.  
  
Takes one step backward.  
  
And closes the door.  
  
Caroline tucks her bottom lip under her teeth. There aren’t any words she can string together to form a coherent sentence that could accurately convey the bizarre release she experiences, but there are thoughts. A flurry of them, non-sequential memories, flitting by her and feeling every bit as fresh as the days they happened.  
  
He made her  _feel_ things.  
  
 _Idiot_ , her forehead wrinkles.  
  
She opens the door open again and sees Kol, still on his back, with her pastel pink scarf draped over his nose and mouth. He bats his lashes at her in comic seduction, then rolls off the bed to get to his feet.  
  
Arms wide open, he cocks his head to the side. "Let's pick up where we left off, shall we?"  
  
No, they will not.  
  
"Get out of my room," comes her needle-thin whisper. "Get out," she says, lower and louder now.  
  
Kol pulls a long face, but it's unserious. "No need to be cross-"  
  
She  _is not cross_ , she internalizes, just before she strides across the room and grabs him by the neck. For some reason, he lets her back him up against her dresser drawers, albeit with a disapproving scowl. "Nails," he protests, but her claw-like grip digs harder into his throat.  
  
Not a great idea on her part. Kol wheezes his discomfort, and then pries her fingers off with little difficulty.  
  
"You're so full of shit," she snaps, wrist trembling with resistance. She’s mentally prepped to be thrown somewhere, but he forces both her hands behind her back instead to hold her full against him. “What the hell are you doing here?”  
  
Kol looks down at her mouth. It's been awhile, hasn’t it? "Well I missed you too.”  
  
Caroline's fingers cramp at being folded awkwardly in her palm -  _dear God_  it drives her crazy to not be able to slap him in the face. She tries once again to pull free, but  _ugh_ , he smells good, and having him all around her, enveloping, invading… it doesn’t help.  
  
"You think you can just walk in here and get me to roll out the welcome mat?"  
  
"No," he replies.  _Tell me that you missed me,_  the slow, dark dip of his lashes suggest,  _the way that I have missed you._ The unmistakable hard press of him against her dress is all the emphasis that she needs. "I thought you’d ask me why it took me a year to get back to you."  
  
"I didn't even notice."  
  
Kol chuckles. "That's hard to believe. There isn’t a trace of anyone else in your space.”  
  
She frowns at the notion of him snooping around. “This isn’t the only place where I can hook up with someone.”  
  
“Mmm, if only you knew how much I cared about who you kissed goodnight and pretended to like more than-“ he sniffs at her, “-the shit booze you presented tonight.”  
  
“I swear to god-” she grits, because she didn’t even fricking have anything to do with the bottle selection and she has no idea why he’d even go round in circles about her love or sex life or whatever when he’s just going to wedge himself back into it  _anyway_ , “-I am going to  _hurt_ you if you don’t let me go.”  
  
He turns his head and lets out a controlled burst of a laugh. She hadn’t even been that angry to begin with, but this is something that makes Caroline go from zero to sixty in rage. It’s so typical.  _So typical,_ that he should make it seem like it isn’t him crawling back to her to have his fill before he hits the road again.  
  
She isn’t a pit stop. And she sure as hell isn't just going to stand there and swallow it down like bad medicine.  
  
In his split second of distraction, Caroline’s canines extend into pearl white points.  
  
She bites down into the exposed curve of his neck. Hard.  
  
She can't decide which is more satisfying – his loud bark of pain, or the fact that she manages to take two quick drags of him before he shoves her away and onto the floor.  
  
Kol stumbles back and slaps a hand on the wound, already drenching his tee dark.  
  
“I told you,” she runs her tongue over the top row of her teeth, back of hand wiping under her chin.  
  
He stares, dull branches of his vampire visage appearing for a second before they fade away. “Shit.” He checks his fingers, completely glossed in the deep hue of his own blood.  
  
The entire room smells of it. Kind of makes her hungry, actually. It's been so long since she's sunk her fangs into a neck.  
  
“Was that good for you?” he seethes, half-mad, half-amused that she’d even try it.  
  
Caroline gets up and straightens her dress out. “I'm not that into cowards.”  
  
“You think I ran away?” Kol rolls his shoulder back. “I was tying up loose ends.”  
  
“A year. Of loose ends.”  
  
“It’s not easy to placate drug lords.”  
  
“Drug lords-” She rubs her temples with her fingers. “You know what? I don’t want to know. I don’t need this. Just get out. And stop messing with Mike.”  
  
“I had to do better than a text,” he says, to which Caroline walks over to the door and opens it for him.  _Get out,_ she repeats through a gesture. “Look. It’s all done now. Won’t be getting into trouble for awhile. You can be mine. I can be yours.” Kol sets his hand gently over hers, printing blood on the back of it.  
  
"Nobody belongs to anyone," she says, soft and quiet with all the weight of her words bearing down on her. Prickling, questioning.  
  
Nostalgia strikes her hard when he slides his clean hand into her hair. "Is that what you say to make yourself feel better about liking me?"  
  
"Nothing makes me feel better about liking you." She says this much too impulsively, not realising what she's admitted to until she sees the smugness written all over his face.  
  
"Let's see what we can do about that."  
  
She doesn't turn away when he kisses her.  _No_ , she scolds herself, but she leans into it, weak in her resolve.  
  
Hand on the nape of her neck, Kol presses his kisses beside her mouth, on her chin, under her ear - he's tasting every stretch of bloodstained skin. Remember what his glib tongue is capable of doing? He can be  _so_ convincing, she thinks, as she attempts to suppress the wild ache forming inside of her.  
  
No good. Caroline releases the handle and Kol pushes the door shut.  
  
She reaches back to mind the zipper of her own dress. Too slow. Kol forces the fabric down to her waist, and she helps him pull the shirt over his head, his wince somehow adding to her bloodlust, _god, why is it so hot in here?_  
  
And then there's her pounding heart, beating bold in her chest because the wet glisten of his wound is distracting. Blood is blood, and she's got an appetite for it.  
  
He’s about to dive in for another kiss when he notices her ravenous little animal stare, fixed on his shoulder. Fine little capillaries are mapped in the whites of her eyes, with more of them stretching down into the apples of her cheeks. It’s Kol’s favourite thing to witness, it seems, as he raises his fingers to them and traces down to her now-elongated fangs.  
  
Though Caroline draws back, never having liked anyone touching her teeth, she can't look away from the slow tip of his head to the side – is he…? Yes, he is – until she can see the muscle under the mark of her bite pull taut.  
  
Gazing from the corner of his eye, he dares her. "Go on."  
  
There are many reasons not to do this, she knows there are. It's just hard to be rational about it. Not when Kol, for the first time, is throwing her off completely by acting  _submissive_. It's so unexpected that she hesitates in fear that he'll somehow turn the tables on her again, pin her down, rough her up.  
  
But he doesn't even move. Kol embraces her instead, red rivulets running down the length of his back and lets her drink, until she’s panting and paranoid about a sudden appearance by Bonnie, who would totally be horrified to find two vampires in the middle of some kinky bloodplay.  
  
With a hand covering her forehead, Caroline makes a decision. "You're coming home with me," she says to him, before putting her dress back on and dragging him out of the door.  
  


  
  
Of course, they argue on the way, about the drugs and Kol’s apparent preoccupation with mind-controlling her cousin. He doesn't have answers that satisfy her,  _not everything comes with a sensible explanation,_ he shouts into the night air, a response that she doesn’t like but seems to ring truer than any other nonsense he's been spouting since they first bumped into each other.  
  
Because she can’t come up with the reasons herself. Like, why didn't she look for a white oak stake every time she went home? Or why did she need to kiss him the first time instead of just letting the moment pass? Why does she let this unpredictable ass take her down her own road of crazy?  
  
She doesn’t have the good answers, the logical ones, the ones born from common sense. She’s only left with short, staccato outbursts of frustrated Shut Ups and Oh My God's, until they finally arrive at her bed and she mutters a different kind of Shut Up and Oh My God to the skill of his eager, familiar fingers that know when and where and how to make her ache.  
  
The fact is that even when he's being an idiot, Caroline still likes him enough to not punch him when he bites into her thigh in the middle of a powerful climax. She likes him enough to let him bite her a second time as he guides himself into her and grips, grabs, digs blunt fingertips into her until she bruises. Likes him enough to want to kiss him with her blood in his mouth while he holds her thighs apart and drives himself deep.  
  
That counts for something. Liking him.  
  
 _Oh Caroline,_  she hears Kol moan,  _it's good to come home._  
  
She turns her head and grasps the sheets.  
  
Speaking of coming-

  
  
  
"Maybe a year was a little too long,” Kol says, but it doesn’t sound like regret, no, he’s not the type to be huddled over in something as wasteful and unproductive as remorse. He’s hoping for Caroline’s reaction. Who knows for what reason - to be annoying on purpose, maybe, but nobody actually knows what goes on in that manic brain of his.  
  
Lying on his stomach next to her, he traces gentle, careful circles around the marks he’d left on her thighs, round, irregular spots that fit the shape of his fingers, like the teeth of a key to its lock. He's admiring his handiwork.  _Critiquing_ in his head.  _Next time,_ she imagines him thinking, as he mentally dots a path across her ribs,  _a little clamp of the mouth here wouldn't hurt. Much._  
  
He, on the other hand, is completely unmarred. She’d torn her nails down the length of his back and four hours later, he’s brand new again. No red welts, or jagged lines, no proof of her feeding.  _Unfair,_ ­she thinks. She wants evidence, where bright raw patterns of ownership should be worn on his neck like a brand.  
  
Ah well. Even if she doesn't actually see any of it, she knows that her name’s already written somewhere in his bones. He wouldn't be back otherwise.  
  
"You don't need to explain yourself," Caroline says.  
  
It earns her some skepticism. "Really? You're giving up?"  
  
“I’m  _not_  giving up.” It'd be much easier for her to stop trying to understand everything and just enjoy the time spent with him. He doesn’t need to know that, though.  
  
“No, that’s what I thought. You’re not the type. Besides,” he reaches for the source of persistent buzzing – her phone – in the pool of shed clothes on the floor, “you’ll be far too busy explaining to your friends where you’ve been to start planning on how you’re going to quit  _me_.”  
  
She snatches the cell from his hand and sees eighteen missed calls, good god, and two thumb scrolls worth of unread messages begging to know her whereabouts in short capitalized abbreviations;  _why is there blood in the room/did u kill a wild animal/ur drawers are open and ur scarves are all on ur bed/PLS REPLY ASAP,_ to which Kol chuckles upon glancing the excess of punctuation.  
  
“What will you tell them?”  
  
“That I’m not dead. That I’m fine. That I’m not actually holed up in my room wrapped in bloody sheets being friendly with a psycho.”  
  
Kol reaches for the phone and flings it to the far corner of the bed. “What a terrible idea.”  
  
Caroline’s deep frown appears. “Of all the terrible ideas I’ve ever had, of all the stupid choices I’ve ever made, you’re the worst one.”  
  
She can’t get rid of him – doesn’t exactly  _want to_. Which is why it feels particularly good when he leans in close to her and whispers, soft as a cat’s purr, “I’m your best bad decision, darling.”  
  
She may scoff and push him away now, but her heart does the opposite, a troubled, reckless thing. It’s so blindingly foolish, so captivating and thrilling, to quite possibly spend days on end gnashing teeth, kissing and fighting and lying and hiding and breaking, making love – love? She still doesn’t know – and in every manner a  _best worst decision_  to be with him.  
  
And you know what? She’s perfectly okay with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you just want to have mindless fun, and this was it for me. Thank you for reading my super indulgent Koroline!


End file.
